{"id":7548,"date":"2018-10-31T07:41:43","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T11:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7548"},"modified":"2018-12-13T08:19:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:19:24","slug":"on-the-big-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7548","title":{"rendered":"On the Big Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Looking for a weekend movie? If I had it to do over, out of these three, I\u2019d pick First Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Wife<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Beautifully acted by Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, and directed by Bj\u00f6rn Runge, the movie is based on the book by Meg Wolitzer, who wrote the screenplay with Jane Anderson (trailer<\/a>). For me, there was an unreality to the story\u2019s central conceit that (in this day and age) a woman uses her writing talent to prop up her Nobel prize-winning and serially unfaithful husband for forty years<\/em>. I ended up mad at her.<\/p>\n

What I liked best? The smarmy performance of Christian Slater, determined to get a tell-all biography out of it.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 85%; audiences: 80%.<\/p>\n

Colette <\/em>is another movie in theaters now about a woman writer whose husband takes credit for her work and about a lot else too, judging by the previews. I\u2019m not a Keira Knightley fan. But Dominic West as her husband . . . that\u2019s tempting!<\/p>\n

First Man<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The biopic of Neil Armstrong was directed by Damien Chazelle (trailer<\/a>), with a screenplay by Josh Singer and James R. Hansen, who wrote Armstrong\u2019s biography. Ryan Gosling does a fine job as the buttoned-up Armstrong, who can keep it together even when he\u2019s on the verge of bouncing off the atmosphere into the void of space in the hair-raising opening sequence. And it\u2019s fun to see Claire Foy as an American housewife rather than The Queen.<\/p>\n

I liked the evocation of the 1960s throughout and those times, which, in retrospect seem simpler, but of course weren\u2019t. The early days of the space program were a time of heroes, even though Chazelle doesn\u2019t overdo it. Ignore the complaints that he doesn\u2019t show the flag-raising ceremony<\/a> on the moon. Chazelle wisely opted for a scene that would be meaningful to the very private Armstrong, not a rah-rah \u201cwe\u2019re number one\u201d ego-stroke for the country.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 88%; audiences: 64%.<\/p>\n

The Old Man & the Gun<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

An aging Robert Redford portrays Forrest Tucker, a \u201cgentleman bank robber,\u201d who capped his career of prison escapes with an audacious escape from San Quentin at age 70. Written and directed by David Lowery (trailer<\/a>), the screenplay also had help from David Grann<\/a>, author of a 2003 New Yorker<\/em> article about Tucker.<\/p>\n

Sissy Spacek is a cautious but interested late-in-life romantic partner, and Casey Affleck plays a dogged police detective who follows Tucker\u2019s career of robberies and won\u2019t give up the case to overbearing FBI agents. I also liked his robbery team, Danny Glover and Tom Waits. It\u2019s a pleasantly diverting entertainment, and you can safely wait for Blu-Ray.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 90%; audiences: 62%.<\/p>\n

Read the Book?<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/a>\"\"c<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking for a weekend movie? If I had it to do over, out of these three, I\u2019d pick First Man. The Wife Beautifully acted by Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, and directed by Bj\u00f6rn Runge, the movie is based on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"On the Big Screen - my take on three current movies: meh, yeh, and wait for Blu-Ray","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265,272,366,57,104],"tags":[1436,218,416,1438,1437,28],"class_list":["post-7548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-comedy","category-drama","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-first-man","tag-hollywood","tag-real-life","tag-the-old-man-the-gun","tag-the-wife","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1XK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7550,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions\/7550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}